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Our writers’ room wrapped up its first week by knocking completing its fourth story in as many days: tease, five acts, and, because you demanded it (and, frankly, I recall how much you wanted them back in the Atlantis days), a tag. I’m very happy with the first five episodes. As one nameless writer (let’s call him Ramone Kluegelhopf) put it: “They MOVE!”. Oh, that they do. We’ll take the weekend to decompress and then, next week, we’re back at it. I think we’ll take a few days to look over what we got so far, discuss the various arcs, nail down the remaining premises (making sure each of our characters has their opportunity to shine and suffer) and then we’ll resume spinning again. We were aiming to have 10 of our 13 episode first season broken by end of July but, at this pace, it’s looking like we’ll have all 13 stories heading into August, a.k.a. Writing Month!

September will also be Writing Month II + a side order of Japan as I pull up my annual culinary pilgrimage to Tokyo to accommodate series prep. We’ve already started discussions on production design (ships, space stations, etc.), visual effects, and locations (I think we got us a space freighter!) and, by the time we make the move to Toronto on November, constructions will have already begun on our sets. I will, of course, spend the first two weeks sleeping in the crew’s quarters and eating in the ship’s mess (maybe even performing an EVA to disable the long range sensors) to really get in the mood in the build-up to principal photography.

It also sounds very involved and complicated but, really, a week into The Bridge Studio’s elaborate recycling system, I’m up for anything:

Their plastic bodies are soft but their bottoms and caps are mighty hard. So where do the empty plastic bottles go?

Trick question! They go in the bottle bin at the bottom left. The bin at the right is for cadaver bones.

Oh, and speaking of being up for anything, I came across this interesting option in the cereal aisle of my local supermarket:

(Sorry, it’s all I could think of after spending a day discussing Death Metal, Black Metal, Industrial Metal, Nu-Metal and just plain Metal Metal – while I was supposed to be working 😛 – then going down to the local watering hole and enjoying a very good blues cover band. My brain is having trouble computing it all. Also, I’ve decided that Death Metal would be a lot better if the vocalists didn’t sound like they had cats stuck in their throats.

Hmmm. Let us know how the cereal works. I might have a need for it. Q: if the ship is using a form of elector magnetic radiation for the sensors how can it detect something going the speed of light or near in time.

@SexCereal: this is the embodiment of the marketing saying, “Sex sells.” I’m now waiting for SexBandaids (to handle those boo-boos), SexCrets (for that inevitable cold and sore throat), and SexLax (we’ll you can guess what that one’s for).

After a pleasant time at dinner with Line Noise last night in Bath (a quick wave to Line Noise; we have to do that again sometime!), I’m off to Monmouth to watch a friend’s tennis tourney and to grab a pub lunch. Tomorrow it’s off to Catania, and then later in the week, Milan. I finish off with an overnight in London and then back to Chicago a week from tomorrow.

And I’m glad you found your space freighter. I am so ready for a good ship-based sci-fi show.

@das: ...filing away new nickname… Discussing music while ostensibly working sounds like a perfectly reasonable what to spend a Friday. I like metal and agree with you about some of the vocals. But it’s an art form and I know that my kids are very impressed by singers who can distort their voices without any electronic aid.

Which reminds me of a really good movie I saw on the way back from Iceland: https://www.facebook.com/metalheadfilm . Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyxhcNsjWKI. It’s a little misleading – yeah, there is tragedy but the movie isn’t as oppressively dark as it appears in the trailer. Far from it. And they completely left out the Metal. Since it’s a subtitled Icelandic film, it probably won’t ever make it to the US anyway. But if you ever see it listed anywhere like Netflix, the Independent Film Channel on your TV, etc. it’s worth watching.

Ships, Space stations, Faster than light travel, Offworld scenes… This sounds like my kind of show. Can’t wait to find out what it is. *fingers crossed for a new 25th century Trek TV series* One can hope 😉 …Just please.. Not another Battlestar :-/

Congratulations on the first four, and especially on finding that cereal. But most especially for cracking the recycling code!

If your looking for an interesting book I would suggest Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins. It’s a fictionalized account of the Fatty Arbuckle trials beginning in Sept 1921. Arbuckle was charged with murder after a young woman collapsed and died during a wild celebration in San Francisco. He was accused of raping her and bursting her bladder with his ‘extreme’ weight. (260 lbs)

I thought it was a little on the slow side but still interesting. He introduced a plot by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst to destroy Arbuckle because Hearst thought Arbuckle slept with his ex girlfriend, rather then the more bland reason of selling as many papers as possible. Anyways, it’s an interesting story, especially with the scandals effect on Hollywood and the industry at the time. I also wonder if anything has changed between then and now, comparing it to the satanic daycare trials in the US.

Ace Atkins has also written The Ranger, which I enjoyed, and the latest Robert B. Parker’s book in the series, Cheap Shot.
Don’t hold that against him.

Probably to much to hope it a Star Trek series, so here hoping it a show base on your dark matter comic book series or perhaps something entirely unexpected MGM getting it act together and commissioning a new Stargate show.